


The Queens’ Cost

by ashleybenlove



Category: Sleeping Beauty (1959), Tangled (2010)
Genre: Community: disney_kink, Emotional Hurt, Gen, Not being able to raise your child
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-30
Updated: 2018-05-30
Packaged: 2019-05-16 08:47:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14808104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashleybenlove/pseuds/ashleybenlove
Summary: Leah told her the harshest truth about their situation: “You will never have the same relationship with your daughter as you could have had if you had raised her from birth.”





	The Queens’ Cost

**Author's Note:**

> I originally posted this anonymously in December 2012 on the Disney Kink Meme for the prompt: "Sleeping Beauty/Tangled. Hearing that her (friend/sister?) the Queen of Corona has gotten her daughter back, Aurora's mother gooes to Corona, so they can talk. 
> 
> Well, Aurora's mother may have given her daughter to the safety of the forest willingly, but that doesn't mean she can't listen, and help Corona's queen through the same thing she had to go through, knowing that they got their children back... But oh, what a cost."
> 
> Because this was written in 2012, before Tangled: Before After or Tangled: The Series, before Arianna's name was revealed, I named her Rachel, just like in my fic ["A Lady Does Not… But She Did"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14803454).

Aurora, Queen Leah’s daughter was twenty-eight years old, already back in her life for a dozen years, when she got word that the Kingdom of Corona, a kingdom they shared a border with, regained their Lost Princess, who was now eighteen, almost gone as long.

Leah understood what Queen Rachel of Corona must have gone through, though their situations were radically different: she, Leah, allowed the good fairies to take Aurora to raise her in the forest as their own for over a decade and a half, for her daughter’s safety. Whereas, Rapunzel, had been lost, stolen by someone in the middle of the night, only to show up at eighteen. 

Her heart went out to Rachel. Both of their daughters were gone for between close to twenty years: long time to be separate from one’s parents. 

So, after three months had passed (she felt it would be bad form to impose on them earlier) since Corona got Princess Rapunzel back, Leah went for a visit to Corona to visit with Rachel, officially the visit was to keep good relations between their kingdoms (Leah’s kingdom having been combined with King Hubert’s upon Aurora’s marriage more than a decade ago). 

 

 

“It’s hard getting to know her,” Rachel told her, sipping tea. 

Leah nodded.

“I last saw her when she was six months old. Now she’s eighteen. She’s my daughter, and I love her so much and I want to know her, but… I have barely known her less than a year,” Rachel said. “And she’s eighteen.”

Leah understood how Rachel felt. And it hurt. She wanted to cry for her ally. But she kept herself composed. It would not do to burst into tears mid-conversation.

“Does it get better?” Rachel asked, after a long pause.

Leah gave a deep, sad sigh.

“Aurora has been back in my life for a dozen years, and it is still a little difficult. She still answers to the name that the good fairies gave her (but it is a nice name, though!) I…” Leah paused, and was briefly unsure of how to say what she wanted to say next. “Sometimes I feel like she feels closer to the good fairies than to me.”

Leah paused as they both took a sip of tea and Rachel took in what she was told. And then Leah told her the harshest truth about their situation: “You will never have the same relationship with your daughter as you could have had if you had raised her from birth.”

Rachel looked disappointed and sad by this, but Leah was speaking from experience, so she nodded, and understood. 

“It does get better, though. Aurora calls me ‘mom’ and asks my advice and I was there when her first child was born, and she had, at one time, treated me like a stranger,” Leah said. “But our relationship will never be the same as it would have been had we not sent her willingly into the forest. And while she understands, I think she resents me and her father a little for that.”

“I wish we had searched harder for her in those earlier years,” Rachel said, regretfully. 

“That witch hid her away! It is _not_ your fault!” Leah exclaimed, firmly. “You did the best you could!” 

Rachel nodded slowly.

“All you can do now is try to gain a relationship with your daughter _now_ ,” Leah said.


End file.
